About
These desert dwellers can inflate their bodies by swallowing air. Chuckwallas are lizards that belong to the iguana family. They survive in arid, inhospitable habitats and have the ability to curtail all vital activities during periods of extreme temperatures or water deprivation. Chuckwallas lead mostly solitary lives. Males are very territorial. Like most lizards, they bask in the morning. Once their body temperature reaches around 100°F they begin foraging. Despite their large size, chuckwallas are timid. When threatened, a chuckwalla will often scramble into small rock crevices and inflate its body by gulping air, increasing its size by over 50%. Around the neck and shoulders, the skin is loose and folded, so that when the lungs inflate, the skin unfolds to enable the trunk to expand considerably. The chuckwalla’s rough-skinned body firmly anchors it to the rock making it hard for predatory birds and mammals to pull it out. Natural enemies of chuckwalla are large mammals, snakes, raptors, and humans.
Habitat
Chuckwallas are found in shrub lands with rock outcrops, rocky hillsides, and lava flows where daily temperatures exceed 104°F and rainfall is rare. One species of chuckwalla, the common chuckwalla, lives in the United States, and the 4 other species are found in Baja California, Mexico.
DIET
Chuckwallas are herbivorous. They find most of their food from the flowers, leaves, and buds of the creosote bush and other arid-land vegetation such as prickly pear. Water is obtained from the plants it eats. It may also eat some insects that are on the plants.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
In case food becomes scarce Chuckwallas store fat in their tails. If necessary, they will sacrifice their tail to a predator by allowing it to break off at a special fracture point. Chuckwallas can grow a replacement tail, but the replacement is not as long or of the same color as the original. Juvenile male chuckwallas are usually colored similar to females, because of this, adult males will tolerate their presence until they mature.
Location Within the Zoo
You’ll find this animal in the LAIR’s Arroyo Lagarto. See Zoo Map.
